Module 4

Week 4            Late Classical Era. Writing workshop for Paper 1.

(Jun 1-5)         Due:    Module 4, Paper 1 & WW Intro to Part 3, Ch 7 (Commerce & Culture),

                        Ch 8 (China & the World), Ch 9 (Worlds of Islam)

Well, the summer of 2020 just keeps getting more and more intense… and it’s not even really summer yet. That won’t happen until the Summer Solstice later this month. Let’s keep trying to learn from the human past in ways that help us understand the human present, in hope of co-creating a better human future. You guys did some good work finding the many ways our passage from Gilgamesh can help us understand what it means to be a civilized human being – or at least what it meant for the people of pre-ancient Mesopotamia. So many of those things are still part of being a civilized human today: consuming processed food products such as beer and bread, conforming to “the way one lives,” reaching new levels of “understanding,” seeking friendship, challenging others for leadership, trying to “change the order of things,” and the list goes on and on. It’s a rich passage. Many people in the US are reflecting these days on the feelings their own inner Enkidu is prompting from them – Is it a time to conform? Is it a time to seek friendship? Is it a time to challenge? Is it a time to make change? If you’d like to do an extra credit blog post this week, you can write one reflecting on these questions.

For many of you, the expansion of inequality during the early Classical era is what captured your attention most from the reading last week. We continue to explore the theme of how humanity went from societies based on relationships of equality and mutual respect for the roles different people play, to societies based on relationships of inequality and oppression based on wealth, status, power and gender. You’ll notice that widespread inequality based on race hasn’t come into the picture yet. The cosmopolitan urban centers of the Classical world were primarily about trade, and that meant bringing together people from all over the AfroEurAsian world on an equal competitive footing. In fact, as we’ll see this week, China was the superpower dominating the thriving Indian Ocean Trade network. And Islamic civilization was experiencing dynamic growth in culture, commerce and more by spreading into Africa, Asia and Europe. 

This Classical world was racially diverse with an emphasis on commerce, not color. We won’t see widespread inequality based on race until Europeans begin the process of colonization, at which point racism becomes a way to rationalize acts of aggression that are in clear disregard for human dignity. That disregard is still with us today, in the 21^stcentury, as we’ve seen exploding into the news – again – this week. Just know that, as many of you wrote in your Quiz responses, it isin fact possible to have human societies that not oppressive, we havehad examples of this in the human record. Racial brutality is historically situated… it is not inevitable. Like Enkidu, each one of us can challenge the status quo and “change the order of things” by our own acts of leadership large or small. Please keep these thoughts in mind as you do your Module 4 assignments.

1) Your first assignment for this week is to finish your assignments from last week. Some of you are behind on your reading and blogging. I know it’s a lot of material. Please send me an email if you want some help managing the workload. In that email, let me know as specifically as you can where it is that you get stuck and why you feel you’ve gotten behind.

2) Your second assignment for this week is to do the reading, and write two (just 2) blog entries about the readingfor this week. They should begin as follows:

One of them should begin: I found it interesting to read that…

A second one should begin: I was sad / disappointed / angry to read that…

Your blog posts should show evidence of having done the reading, but also feel free to make them personal. You might find them easier to write that way.

3) Third, we’re going to drill down on China this week. Study the following description of what it means to be a “Classical” civilization. Many human societies have had a Classical period… some have not. Those that have, have generally displayed the following characteristics:

Classical

1) Competition for dominance between civilizations

2) Unique thinkers develop the seminal ideas that still define us as peoples

3) Formation of complex Empires & cosmopolitan urban centers

4) Political units arise which straddle more than one continent

See if you can come up with some concrete examples from this week’s chapter on China that demonstrate China was still experiencing a “Classical” phase of civilization at this time. Turn these concrete examples into bullet points, or “talking points”that you might use if you were trying to explain to someone else why the Classical period of Chinese civilization might be said to extend all the way from 500BC to 1300AD. Keep your talking points handy but do not post them to your blog.  Just write a one-sentence post in your blog saying how many talking points you were able to compile. You’ll use them next week. If you want to practice using them, try them out on a friend or family member, perhaps someone with whom you are sheltering in place.

4) Finally, you’ll write a short analytical paper on Classical era leadership, I’ll post the passage for analysis as a “Writing Workshop” in a separate post. 

That’s it for this week. Again, if you’re having trouble with the workload and want some tips on how to manage it, please don’t hesitate to let me know. I’ll continue to reach out to those of you who I perceive to be falling behind, but sometimes students struggle in ways that aren’t obvious and that can especially be the case with this online format where I never get to see you in person. Don’t hesitate to reach out.